Using FieldManager to Apply a set of (Templated) property values for existing BO

Kevin Fairclough posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Hi All

I have a use case in which one or more templates can be applied to a BO that will automatically set values of the BO with those of the template. I have the template RO object that contains a list of properties and values stored currently as string values, so i'll need conversion too.

I ideally don't want to use reflection in my BO in order to set property values, I'm using ManagedFields can I use FieldManager in some way for this?

It is also likely that other BOs will require similar functionality in the future.

Has anyone done something similar? A pointer to the best approach would be great!

TIA
Kevin

chrduf replied on Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Hi Kevin

We have the same requirement. Here’s what we did….

Create a new factory object in your BO

1438 #region CreateFromTemplate

1439

1440 #if !(SILVERLIGHT)

1441 public static RequestEntity CreateFromTemplate(Guid newRequestId, Guid templateId, string contactId, string customerId, string projectId, bool clientPortal)

1442 {

1443 return DataPortal.Create<RequestEntity>(new CriteriaCreateFromTemplate(newRequestId, templateId, contactId, customerId, projectId, clientPortal));

1444 }

1445 #endif

1446

1447 public static void CreateFromTemplateAsync(Guid newRequestId, Guid templateId, string contactId, string customerId, string projectId, bool clientPortal, EventHandler<DataPortalResult<RequestEntity>> handler)

1448 {

1449 DataPortal<RequestEntity> dp = new DataPortal<RequestEntity>();

1450 dp.FetchCompleted += handler;

1451 dp.BeginCreate(new CriteriaCreateFromTemplate(newRequestId, templateId, contactId, customerId, projectId, clientPortal));

1452 }

1453

1454 #endregion

1919 private void DataPortal_Create(CriteriaCreateFromTemplate criteria)

1920 {

1921 // get your default settings from your template object

1922 RequestTemplateEntity requestFrom = RequestTemplateEntity.GetForCreateFromTemplate(criteria);

1923

1924 // use the template properties to initialize your BO

1925 LoadProperty<short?>(QuantityProperty, requestFrom.Quantity);

1926 LoadProperty<string>(DescriptionProperty, requestFrom.Description);

1927

1928 ValidationRules.CheckRules();

1929 }

From: Kevin Fairclough [mailto:cslanet@lhotka.net]
Sent: Tuesday, November 17, 2009 11:46 AM
To: chris.dufour@wigets.net
Subject: [CSLA .NET] Using FieldManager to Apply a set of (Templated) property values for existing BO

Kevin Fairclough replied on Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Hi

Thanks for the reply.

Similar to our requirement but not quite the same. We also need to apply many templates to an already fetched BO. I would like to be able to use FieldManager to read and write properties and property values in a generic way. Has anyone used FieldManager in this way?

Kevin

Pawz.777 replied on Thursday, November 19, 2009

This might help you.. in this instance I'm using a customized PropertyInfo to declare the database field name and use it to retrieve the correct fields for the property.. It would be easy enough to swap it around and match up the name of the property (field.Name) with the properties of your template...

            foreach (var field in FieldManager.GetRegisteredProperties())
            {
                if (field.GetType().GetGenericTypeDefinition() == typeof(CsPropertyInfo<>))
                {
                    var fieldProp = (IPropertyDatabase) field;
                    if (!FieldManager.FieldExists(fieldProp))
                    {
                            LoadProperty(field, dr.GetValue(fieldProp.DatabaseName));
                    }
                }
            }